Tuesday August 31, 2010 11:45 am

Xbox LIVE membership fee increasing $10 per year—lock in lower price now

If you haven’t heard by now, Microsoft is going to be increasing the yearly cost of Xbox LIVE membership by $10 per year starting on November 1. This comes after 8 years of the service remaining at a steady $50 per year, and kills rumors that the service would actually go free sometime soon. On November 1, a year of Xbox LIVE Gold will cost you $59.99, one month will cost $9.99 (up from $7.99,) and the three-month subscriptions will go from $19.99 to $24.99. They say it’s to support new features like Kinect, ESPN, and Hulu Plus coming to Xbox LIVE (despite the fact that Hulu Plus costs $10 a month in the first place.)

The one silver lining here is that you can currently buy yourself a one-year Xbox LIVE subscription for just $39.99, locking in that $20 savings for a year. It will just get tacked on to your current subscription if you already have one. If you want multiple years of savings, you can always find Xbox LIVE discounts on Amazon.